Puretunes Pays Out To The RIAA

from the well-that-did-nothing... dept

Last year, a company opened up in Spain called Puretunes, that claimed they had the right licenses in place to sell MP3 music at a flat rate. The company claimed that, in Spain, all you needed was permission from the Spanish authors' and performers' rights societies. However, the RIAA (despite this being a Spanish company) quickly and vehemently disagreed. Today comes the news that the company, which was actually started by the same folks who ran Grokster, has settled the lawsuit by paying out $500,000. Also, the parent company of Puretunes was ordered to pay $10 million -- but that company no longer exists. The folks behind Puretunes still claim that they did have all the necessary agreements... over email. They just didn't have the actual papers signed. This sounds highly unlikely. If they had the agreements, why not get the papers signed to make it clear?
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  • identicon
    Matt, 26 Oct 2004 @ 4:20am

    No Subject Given

    of course the downside is that this loophole (if it existed) has now been brought to the RIAA's attention, so I guess we can expect some European political donations in the near future

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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